Weekend plans

Easter weekend my travel plans (Jerusalem, anyone?) fell through, so I stayed at the dorms and am planning to go to the Holy Land for Eastern Easter, with a kid I met here who's Greek Orthodox. So I staying in Cairo and worked on my grant proposal for this summer (!!!) and did some little things. One morning I hung around the room of some friends of mine who are roommates (Hala, who's Palestinian, and Jessica, who's American) and Hala made us Turkish coffee and we sat on their balcony. Turkish coffee, Hala explained to us, is not like a cup of American coffee--it's not to be drunk on the run, and you drink it in company. Hanging out with them was lovely and probably the highlight of the weekend.

Because I stayed in a lot, I felt kind of disconnected from Egypt and being here during the week following Easter, and I was trying to just wrap up a couple assignments so I stayed in and just went between the dorms and campus. The weekend following was nice, and I feel back on track as far as trying to engage with the culture and the people I meet. I went with some friends (mix of Americans and Arabs) to "Islamic Cairo", which is a touristy market in the midst of important Islamic buildings that are about a thousand years old. We went to a park...which is not a common or natural occurrence on the Cairo landscape. It was huge, green, lit up after the sun went down and was full of young happy Egyptians. Afterwards, Enas (my roommate) and I were going to go home and do homework, but then decided since it was a Friday night to give it one more hour (we're such wild girls; we stay out until 8:45) and go on with the group to an Egyptian coffee-and-hookah cafe called an "'ahwa," which is one of the richest, simplest pleasures for me here. It was even better because I've been buckling down on homework and Grinnell requirements recently, so I haven't gone to one of these places in 3-4 weeks. I love Turkish coffee and باشرب شيشة احيانا and the atmosphere is so relaxed and social and unrushed. It's always mostly older and middle aged Egyptian men at the other tables, and they're interested in talking to their friends and drinking their tea or coffee, just like we are. The best 'ahawi (plural of 'ahwa) in my opinion have been in alleys between other buildings, so it's like there are walls on two sides but you're open to the air above and there's thoroughfare and activity at either end of the "premises." Chris called while we were at this 'ahwa, so I got to talk to him a little--the best of both worlds.

Saturday was also an out and about day, with an architectural field trip to some early Muslim shrines and religious schools. I've started asking my architecture professor more questions about Islam, and it's great to talk to her because she's so smart and knowledgeable. I asked some questions about fatwa-s and the mufti (apparently there is one for Egypt, but a group--دار--of scholars here who discuss that kind of religious interpretations stuff) because we had discussed it in my Anthropology class Thursday. There's so much interesting stuff about Islam that I don't know anything about!

I had my first Formal Arabic (aka Modern Standard Arabic aka فصحى) lesson Saturday, which I'm getting through a language school downtown separate from AUC that a friend here recommended. It felt really good to be doing some formal study again, and I don't think it'll be nearly as hard to move between Formal and Colloquial as I thought. Enas has it down and knows which words are formal and which are colloquial and which are both, so why can't I? I'm managing, on the low level of Arabic that I do have under my belt. Immediately after the Formal lesson, I had a talkative cab driver back to the dorms, so no threat of loosing my colloquial. I still don't have a good answer to the question of what I'm going to do with my Arabic. But I like languages too much to just let learning them turn into a personal passtime.